Posted on 09/12/2008 1:41:12 PM PDT by Old Sarge
Governors. What do they know?/sarc
Most states enforce their own anti-gouging laws.
A lot of people, like my self, saw this coming. The media has been clamoring for a large enough disaster (and warning us all along) to set off this price hike/shortage.
It's going to be hard to convince folks that speculators and/or unscrupulous individuals aren't to blame.
I think you use a bad analogy. Gas is a commodity and houses are not.
IMO, in the event of an emergency, everyone from the refinery to the consumer should absorb some of the loss not, just the comsumer.
People should have the choice of selling their services to some, to give them away, or to give them to none at all.
Let those people decide, not some governmental law. Should we have a law that forces the first person to come upon a car, pulled off to the side of the road, to stop to try to help? Right now, if you don’t feel it’s safe, or simply don’t choose to do so, you pass.
People in this country should have the liberty to sell or not to sell to whomever they please for whatever price.
Should you be forced to offer your wife to others who have none, do that they can have sex, if they otherwise cannot find someone to have sex with?
How’s that for an extreme analogy?
Jacking up prices when people are going through rough times is EVIL. Free market or not.
First off....who is going thru a "rough time" or a hurricane in KY? As that is what the article is about.
Secondly..."speculators" have had little IF anything to do with this story.
“Maybe we should have Congress just take over all the refinery’s.”
What does this have to do with the price of gas in KY?
Not so evil when you consider that the gas station owner/operator is also going thru a "tough time".
He's got to pay for his next 5,000 gallon tank -- at what will probably still be an inflated price (because his distributor is coping with the same supply problem). That's if he can get any at all, of course. And, if he can't, his business (and family) will have to go without.
So, what would you have him do? Give it away? At a loss? And run out even sooner?
When there is a disparity between demand and supply, prices rise so as to ration the product. That's what the free market system you abhor does -- better than any government rationing system ever could.
Just because there's an Exxon sign out front doesn't mean that the guy who owns/runs the station isn't trying to run a profitable business, pay his bills and feed his family.
Question in this area. When gas was much less we were always told the local guy made very little on a gallon, and, obviously there was less room to jack up that little by more little. Today, at $4.00 a gallon, is it any easier for the local guy to double his penny-or whatever it is?
heard FOX was reporting, No damage to refineries. Might make this thread moot.
Whatever makes you think they don't? Big Oil will take it in the chops from Ike -- between damage to the refineries, interrupted supply from and damage to oil platforms and lost markets, they'll take a hickey that will be measured in the billions.
Sure, some will be covered by insurance. But insurance costs money. And it wouldn't surprise me if many of them self-insured.
When the oil companies were hemmorhaging losses back in the eighties, did you campaign for a price increase?
Yes...I realize it was a monster hurricane. But I am very tired of the "Weather Channel" hysterics.
We get so much of it here in Oklahoma....it's not even funny.
A geriatric doctor that I heard of...once wrote the local T.V. stations....to tell them they had personally cost him 10's of thousands of $$$. The stations would broadcast doom and gloom rain/snow/blizzards/hail..etc..etc.
His patients would cancel or not show....and the weather would be perfect. The guy had a point.
If he thinks he can't make any money off that gas or he might lose costumers maybe, he shouldn't buy it? (they claim they don't make much anyway)
When the news gets back to the corporate official that Ahmed, the station owner, doesn't want his overpriced gas load, then we'll see if the price remains overly high.
Yes, I realize the distributor will find someone, somewhere to buy his overpriced gas (hopefully at great expense) but, Ahmed won't lose any costumers who might think he's trying to get over on them.
Supply and demand works both ways.
Retailers make next-to-nothing on the sale of gasoline. Instead, with the rise of convenience stores, it's the merchandise inside the store that generates most (if not all) of the profits.
But, let's give them the benefit of the doubt, let's say their gross profit margin on gasoline sales is 4%. That's fair -- they could make the same by investing in the money market.
4% of $4.00 is more than 4% of $3.50 (and it should be, because the higher gasoline goes, the more capital it takes to run the place). So, yes, the higher the price, the more pennies they'll make per sale. But the fewer sales they'll likely have.
Everybody's profits in the oil business are measured in pennies. The refineries net about 8-10 cents per gallon of gasoline. Their profits are so huge because they sell so damn much of it (along with all the other vital by-products of crude oil).
But, if one argues Big Oil should "give back" some of their "obscene profit", how much of that dime do they think would be fair? Especially since Big Oil is already paying 30-50 cents per gallon the government for the privlege of collecting their dime.
You and Ahmed are perfectly free to act as you suggest.
And I assure you that, if enough people did this, the price would go down.
Amazing how that works...
It’s good people are starting to see through some of the theatrics.
Yep. I notice there have been quite a few people in our area who quit selling gas at the stores. Too many regulations and not enough profit, I guess.
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